Monthly Archives: February 2012

Ok, this may not be important for a classroom teacher, as it would be more geared to a technology staff member, although you may want it at home. I usually refrain from paid apps, but trying many free, I just did not find one as good as VNC.

So VNC is Virtual Network Computing. In other words, you can ‘remote’ to another computer from within your network (i.e. in the same building) or across networks (i.e. your parents in Pennsylvania). Many vendors produce apps, both paid, and free. Before tablets, and still, we use VNC on the desktop within our district to remote to a users computer and hopefully fix their technical problem, without the need to drive to their school. Saves lots of time. We use RealVNC, a pretty good product for quick connections.

With that in itself, it is worth the money. I can visit a school, face a challenging tech issue, and remotely connect to my desktop. Or if I am out and about, and there is another quick problem, I can take care of it. For those not in a tech department–maybe you have a home media server like I do. I keep it ‘headless’–running, but with no keyboard, mouse, monitor. If I want to access files, I need to use the VNC. Or if you are downstairs and want a file off an upstairs computer.

So definitely the application presents itself. I just struggled with slowness on the free apps. Android/Google is currently working on one, Android VNC, and you can find many more, but nothing worked in my case like RealVNC. But try the others, see if they work better for you.

We have been looking at online safety a lot, and not just because the new portion of CIPA says we must. As educators, we must work with online safety and make sure first that we follow it, but then that our students do as well. Kind of the old apple not falling far from the tree thing.

What Google does in this series is divide up the content by child, parent, and educator. Inside each section you will find a series of videos in the style of the old ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books where the user can actually make choices and see consequences to those choices. For teachers you can find lesson plans and interactive games to use with your students. Common Sense Media, a great organization for these types of things, actually provides the content, so you know it will do the job. Check it out at: http://www.thinkb4u.com/

Gosh, if we had more folks like Lessig preaching the good things and exposing the corruption, maybe things would not be the way they are. This video, while lengthy, definitely warrants your time if you appreciate freedom and seeing the corruption in government.

So if you go the route of using an open/semi-open OS for your tablets and mobile devices, like Android, the time will come where you will want to stream video on it or to it. In walks Plex.

To use it, you will definitely need to plan things out. You will need the Plex server running on a machine somewhere on your network. All the content you want to stream will need to be on it. You will need to give careful consideration to that machine and how many clients you want to stream from it. You probably will not have a 1:1 environment, but if you have a few in your classroom (or home), this should work well. For instance, I use Plex on my Sony Blu-Ray with Google TV, and also on my tablets. Works great to show photos, stream videos, and just be cool. I can envision a classroom with a Google TV box or just some tablets, and the teacher assigning videos to the students. Or student created videos. Definitely, though, take time in thinking about it, planning it, and moving slowly with the process.